The Birds of Paradise
by rhoddlet
Summary: Boys, heartbreak, and flying to the stars. Lucius/Snape, Lucius/James.


Title: The Birds of Paradise  
  
Author: rhoddlet  
  
Rating: PG  
  
Summary: Boys, heartbreak, and flying to the stars.  
  
No spoilers. It helps if you know what veela are, though.  
  
NON-EXPLICIT LUCIUS/SNAPE and IMPLIED LUCIUS/JAMES content.  
  
Feedback to rhoddlet@hotmail.com. Or post a review. I'll be a happy, loving duckie either way.  
  
*  
  
On some level, Snape does realize that he's desperately and rather hopelessly in love: he goes to Quidditch matches just to see Malfoy play, brings extra packages of crackers and candies when they go places together, just in case Lucius forgets. He will sit in the dining hall, unable to speak from watching Malfoy come in from Quidditch practice, flushed and excited and even more loose-limbed than usual from exhaustion. There are times when Snape is honestly afraid that his heart is going to burst from pain and joy when he looks at Malfoy.  
  
So tall and slim with hair like. . . Snape struggled over this for days, then decided it was like a cloud -- indescribably soft and pale and always cool to the touch, but just so faintly touched with sunlight. The same goes for his eyes which are silvery with just the palest edge of gold around the edges, and the way Malfoy moves is like a dream, all easy swinging hips and torso following after as a lazy hind thought. How could you not love a boy who was so absolutely sure of himself that it was criminal, who flew like he had been born mid-air and decided to keep going?  
  
Malfoy isn't entirely human -- at least an eighth veela. Lucius has never said as much, but Snape's figured this much out. There's the coloring and the love of flying, but he's lighter by a third than other boys his age and size because of those bird bones. He has the extra-long arms and superb vision that make him such a wonderful Seeker, and then the blazing-fast metabolism where Malfoy gets dizzy and faint if he doesn't eat at least once every five hours. It's why magic comes so easy and control so hard because Snape can feel the raw magic bleeding off Malfoy as a little prickle in the back of his neck whenever he touches Malfoy. As for the amorality -  
  
Well.  
  
Snape figures that it could come from his veela mother, or Malfoy's eminently scrupleless father, or it could be an invention all of Malfoy's own. This last is eminently possible: Snape has the feeling that if Malfoy were Adam, by the time Satan got around to organizing Hell and figured out who the hell Sin was, Malfoy would have seduced Eve, killed off half the animals just for fun, and would have eaten every damned apple in the place. And speared the serpent when he did show up, much, much too late.  
  
They were relatives of a distant sort -- something on the order of fourth cousins. His branch of the family was technically older than Malfoy's, but Malfoy's was the one with the money and the manor. He'd met Malfoy on the train out to Hogwarts, but never really thought much about his cousin until that one night, when he found Lucius leaning against the bathroom wall during his own birthday party. It'd been a big party, still going on in full force in the Slytherin Common room, but there Lucius was, tilted against the wall, watching the empty bathroom with half-slit eyes.  
  
The lights were pretty dim, but Lucius had been burning so brightly that night . . . Rage and grief were burning inside him like oil inside a lamp, beauty and magic pouring off like light from a torch; Snape had almost felt Lucius smoldering against the wall before he saw the body itself. His skin glowed so white that if he'd reached out, Snape thought he might burn himself, but Snape washed his hands, dried them on his robe, and straightened to offer his apologies for leaving the birthday party so soon. Then, Lucius had smiled at him in that distinctly not-quite-human way.  
  
Lucius had smiled, and leaned forward; he had sharp, almost curved canines. "You're not even going to let me kiss me goodbye, cousin?"  
  
Snape remembered smiling back and desperately trying to grip a sudden, strange feeling. As if he were falling from the very highest tower in Hogwarts to the courtyard in the very heart of the castle, that he was watching the ground rush up at him impossibly fast in those golden-grey eyes; there was a flicker of green, a sudden movement of light somewhere to his right, and the bathroom door moved, but all he could hear was a rushing noise in his ears and a sudden ache in his chest. He couldn't even hear his heart beating anymore, and with a twist, Snape wasn't sure it still was. "Are you sure you want to do that, Malfoy?" "Why wouldn't I?" Lucius laughed, and then, almost tenderly, he had leaned forward and pressed his lips to Snape's. It was gentle at first, just the faintest brush of softness and hot breath.  
  
Then, Malfoy pressed his tongue against Snape's mouth and started kissing him hard, then harder, and finally so hard that Snape felt as though he were being crushed, and it was then that Snape knew that he was being kissed with eyes and lips full of love for another person.  
  
"You don't even look like him," Malfoy had said, finally, twisting away with hatred and contempt on his face. He spat on the floor. "You're not nearly as good a kisser as he is, Snape, and much uglier too."  
  
Snape remembered the fierce joy that had surged up inside him; he'd been half-afraid that Malfoy actually wanted something to do with him, and he wasn't stupid enough to want that . . . But, oh, the taste of Malfoy, the heat and rage pouring out of him so strongly that Snape was sure he could see it if he dared to close his eyes . . .  
  
"So?" Snape had whispered, pushing Malfoy hard against the wall and feeling the blood move in Malfoy's wrists. "I'm the one that's here, aren't I?"  
  
Lucius had gone back to the party afterwards. Snape re-washed his hands and went back to the library to re-read the assignment for Charms and memorize the thirty-eight uses of powdered kneazleweed with the memory of Lucius fading from his skin. By morning, it was completely gone except for a dark mark on his thigh where Lucius had bit him through his robes, and in the shower, even that was starting to blur except for the one point where Lucius had broken through the skin.  
  
As a treat for himself for working after going to the party, Snape went down to breakfast with a book of essays on the importance of humoral balances in draughts. The tea was hot and strong, and Snape made himself a stack of heavily buttered toast to go along with DeLauder's discussion of using feverfew to dampen the fire-agency of dragon's blood. And then Malfoy had come down and sat across from him.  
  
"Morning, Snape," Malfoy said. "I see you're being the suckoff you always have been."  
  
Snape blinked at Malfoy -- he looked so ordinary. Shock of white hair, colorless eyes, skin a shade lighter the Bloody Baron's. The black school robes, the blue circles underneath Malfoy's eyes. Snape took a bite out of his toast and watched Malfoy over the edge of his book. "Really, was that how it went last night?"  
  
Malfoy gave him a smooth look. "Who knows what stupidities people do -- it didn't mean anything, you know." Malfoy paused while he took a slice of butter and started spreading it on a muffin. "Tell me, was that the first one you've ever gotten, liddle-Snape-wapey? I bet it wa . . ."  
  
Snape turned around and found himself watching James Potter sitting down at the Gryffinidor table, and after glancing back at Malfoy, who, for the briefest of moments, had the funniest expression on his face, Snape felt a slow, almost malicious smile kind of spread over his face. "Who knows what stupidities, indeed?"  
  
That afternoon, Malfoy came into his room, after classes but before Quidditch. He shut the door, strode up to Snape, who had been sitting as desk, and stared down at him as Snape pushed his chair back from the desk and stood up, slow and lazy.  
  
He touched his right hand to Malfoy's lip. There were some ugly, finger-shaped bruises on the underside of Malfoy's jaw, and his lip was split, so Snape's hand came away with blood on it. Then, Snape touched his cheek, and then his eyes, bright as stars. Malfoy, with a strangled little cry, kissed him.  
  
So, Snape thinks. That lead to this, and this led to now.  
  
It's been raining outside since sundown yesterday, but now, with the grey dawn coming through the windows, it's also stopped, and Snape wonders how it's possible to be so lonely when you can feel someone else's heart beating against your skin. It's a little ticking movement in Malfoy's throat, and every time Malfoy inhales, Snape can feel the air on a little patch of skin on his thigh cool. When Malfoy breathes out, and the little patch warms up, and in between, Snape can feel Lucius's chest go up and down. But there it is, and he's sitting in this great expanse of a bed, in this beautiful room, with his heart's desire in his lap and feeling like he's the last man on earth.  
  
Snape, with a smile, can count a little over nine months since Lucius's birthday, since breakfast and the afternoon when Lucius came to his room. He's been controlling himself since he was old enough to know what it was, much less say the word, and after those brief moments when his heart clenches as though it's going to implode, Snape can smooth his face, steadies his breathing, and go back to stroking Lucius's hair  
  
Malfoy really does have a beautiful room -- whatever he says about Malfoy the Senior, he has wonderful taste in furnishings. The bed is a great big canopy thing with griffons as the posts, and in the last bits of the fire in the fireplace, you can make out the mahogany desk where Malfoy spends an enormous amount of time not studying and the card table and curve-legged chairs where he plays cards and hosts little dinner parties. There's a big armchair with a little footstool by the fireplace proper for reading, not that Malfoy ever really uses it for that, and underneath all that, Snape knows, there's a deep carpet where unicorns and stags run through the forest made out of interlaced green bands lined with gold, the Malfoy colors. If you watch, sometimes you can see squirrels and little birds run around the branches, and sometimes, if you're patient, a nymph will walk through the woods.  
  
Lucius, Snape knows, is not a patient person. It's not in his nature: he wants what he wants now, if not sooner. Snape, though, knows that he himself is, and running his hands through that feather-light hair, Snape knows that he could wait forever for that love, until the unicorn stops chasing the stag in the green forest. One day, it will come, and Snape forces himself to take a breath -- not a deep breath, because that would disturb Malfoy, and he might wake up, but a breath, nonetheless.  
  
*  
  
Probably continued in 'with December's black psalm.' A chocolate Draco to anybody who figures out where that quote is from. :) 


End file.
